Will there be a third Hobbit film?

July 15, 2012 - By Liam Goodwin

During the early days of The Hobbit there was talk of making a “bridge” movie set between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings which would be based on appendix material written by J.R.R. Tolkien. That idea was eventually dropped and the decision was made to split The Hobbit into two films instead, but Peter Jackson revealed at ComicCon that discussions were taking place about potentially shooting more material next year.

HitFix asked Jackson if splitting The Hobbit: There and Back Again, the second film, was likely:

“That’s a discussion we’re having, yeah,” Jackson said. “We have certainly been talking to the studio about some of the material we can’t film, and we’ve been asking them so we can do a bit more filming next year. Which, I don’t know what would come of that, whether it’d be extended editions or whatnot. But those discussions are ongoing.”

“I’d like to shoot a bunch more material that we [couldn’t] shoot. There’s so much good stuff in the appendices that we haven’t been able to squeeze into these movies,” Jackson said, referring to the appendix sections found at the end of “The Return of the King” detailing more background on Middle Earth and its history.

You can watch the brief interview with Jackson below:

As with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, there is a good chance we’ll be getting extended editions of both Hobbit movies on the DVD/Blu-ray. Whether all the extra footage warrants a whole new film remains to be seen. I doubt Jackson would make another entry purely for commercial reasons, as his comments in the interview suggest it’s mainly about filming material he hasn’t been able to.

Would you be interested in seeing a third “bridge” movie, or should it all go in the extended editions?